. . . . On a successful first test flight of the Orion Spacecraft.The launch of the Orion spacecraft.Down here in Houston, TX (Manned Spacecraft Center), they are happy to begin putting astronauts…Continue

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Last nights episode of The Big Bang Theory seemed a bit relative to the discussion below. It seems that Sheldon and Leonard were disagreeing over the relative importance of their individual contributions to a theoretical proposal that they had advanced jointly. Leonard had the inspiration for the theoretical advance but Sheldon had put life into it by developing the mathematical framework needed for robust consistency. The question was which is more important, Inspiration or execution? While not explicitly answered,the implication was that both steps are necessary.

Great replies, evry1, thanks! We watched Particle Fever the other nite, the documentary about the Lg Hadron Collider in Switzerland and it got me really thinking about this stuff, fascinating. And we thought the movie was very good, btw (I know netflix has it); I espec got a kick out of the rivalry betw theoretical and experimental physics. Oh and if you watch it, be warned: when it shows the senators bk in the 80s who suuccessfully stopped a proposed collider facility for Texas, you'll prob want to throw something at the tv.

Granted, Smolin is somewhat an iconoclast in his approach to theoretical physics and he needs to consider how to distinguish his unique speculations from more conventional models using predictable observational data rather than anthropic afterthoughts. However, to paraphrase Darwin, there is a grandeur in this view of a black hole. I mentioned it in the first place because It is a different mindset than the old characterization as an irritating aberration in a friendly, well ordered universe. Out-of-the-box ideas need to be put on a firmer foundation, but they are the creative side of theoretical exploration.

Lee Smolin has more a Sci-Fi imagination than actual physics. If I may...

"Like most popularisers of science, Lee Smolin reacts to this challenge by just leaving out the maths. "There are no equations," he says in the preface, "and everything you need to know to follow my arguments is explained." But, as Smolin must surely know, without the equations it is impossible to convey everything one needs to know to follow his arguments. This is especially true in his case, because he is not popularising accepted theories of physics; he is putting forward a speculative new foundation for the whole of theoretical physics that challenges much accepted wisdom."

Physicist Lee Smolin has suggested that multiple universes have "evolved" by way of a process analogous to biological natural selection. In his Fecund Universe Theory, a black hole is an event which creates a new, separate universe, on the other side. The new universe may have properties similar but slightly different than it's parent, so if the parent universe is organized in such a way as to make the formation of black holes a common event, it's offspring will likely be similar. In any case, a universe that is restricted in this way will leave few if any offspring. Over time the landscape of the Multiverse would become dominated by universes increasingly "fit" to reproduce by the black hole mechanism. It is really sort of an anthropic argument which explains why we live in a universe with this property.

"The black hole is nature's ultimate assault on the notion of a reasonable, friendly universe. No advantage can be extracted from its existence. It adds nothing to the majesty of the natural world. And if there is evidence anywhere that the cosmos does not give a damn for its children, this is it."--from Coming Home by Jack McDevitt